Tangled Heartstrings
by Aya Diefair
Summary: Pansy tries to reconnect with Draco after he pushes her away. Unfortunately, it was harder than it should be. - — Warning: Character Death


**Competition/Challenge Block:**  
**Written for/Stacked with:** Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Term 11); Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition (Season 7); Monthly Challenges for All (Year 2)  
**House/Team:** Ravenclaw (Hogwarts); Wigtown Wanderers (Quidditch League)  
**Role/Position:** Prefect (Hogwarts); Keeper (QL)  
**QL Prompt:** Kill Pansy Parkinson  
**Term (Assignment):** Term 10 (Assignment 3)  
**Subject (Task):** Magical Law & Government Task 3: Write about trying to fix something.  
**Other Hogwarts Challenges:** Insane Prompt Challenge [33] (Heartstrings); 365 Prompts [93] (Explosion); RA (Day 12)  
**Representation:** Pansy Parkinson saves boy in distress; Soulmate!AU  
**Bonus Challenges:** Head of Perseus; In the Trench; Surprise! (RoB); Lyre Liar (NC); Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Persistence Still (FPC); Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice (ToS)); Demo (Hot Stuff; Casper's House)  
**Tertiary Bonus Challenges:** Orator; Olivine (O3); Keen (HoSE)

**Shipping War: **Pansy Parkinson/Draco Malfoy  
**Word Count:** 1999 words (per Google Docs)  
**Beta(s): **Gab, Jet, Bailey

* * *

Pansy Parkinson found herself sulking as she walked back to the Slytherin Common Room from Potions class. Her head hung low and her shoulders slumped enough that she had to use her hand to grip the strap of the bookbag up to keep it from sliding off her person.

Draco had dumped her with nothing more than a scoff and a "We're through." It was devastating to say the least.

She thought giving him the space he seemed to need was the right thing to do after her failures to reach out to him during the train ride to school and a few other times in the common room throughout the first couple of weeks of school. She knew he was going through a lot with his father being sent to Azkaban over the summer. The newspapers made sure it spread like wildfire, but she wanted to be supportive and show him he could turn to her for anything. It was what a proper girlfriend did.

Sure, maybe confronting him with something as trivial as a Soul Link potion was a little aggressive, but it wasn't like she was trying to prove a point or even hoping for it to work. Pansy thought it would be fun, something that would help him take his mind off whatever it was constantly going over for a little while and loosen up. They used to always play silly games before. The potion wasn't going to be anything more than just a dumb game. She supposed her enthusiasm in class gave off other signals instead, and, looking back, she knew it was shameful behavior now.

Pansy looked at the small vial in her hand filled with the translucent blue potion and felt her anger flare. The next thing she knew, she threw the vial hard at the wall several meters in front of her. It shattered against the stone and the glass fell to the floor as the contents oozed down the wall, leaving a shining trail in their wake. Pansy gave a satisfied smirk before entering the common room.

It wouldn't have been a huge deal if it wasn't her birthday today. No one seemed to have remembered that, not even her own parents. Only her grandmother had remembered and sent a gift to her that morning. None of her friends bothered to ask what it was for either, and it stung.

This impending war wasn't helping matters at all. She supposed that was a bit more important than the seventeenth birthday she wanted to share with her friends. Yet, Pansy would have thought celebrating something fun and positive would've lifted their spirits and kept their minds off the looming battle.

She wandered through the common room without registering who was there. Instead, she headed straight to her dorm to conceal her conflicting feelings—the pain of being forgotten and the shame for wanting to be selfish about it. Pansy had forgotten until now about the gift that sat on her bed because she hadn't bothered opening it at the table that morning. Wiping the tears escaping down her face, she reached for the parcel to open it.

At least she could have a little joy for her birthday.

She found the card's contents cryptic, but she unwrapped the velvet bag to reveal a beautiful framed mirror.

Or Pansy thought it was supposed to be one, anyway. The glass pane was a charcoal grey and appeared to be smoking inside, but it didn't show her reflection. She looked at the note again and sighed.

"May this reflect your heartstring's song," she repeated with a snort. "What's that even supposed to mean?"

Placing it back in the velvet bag, Pansy sat the mirror on her nightstand and drew her curtains. She wasn't in the mood to mingle with her dormmates now trickling in for the night, even ignoring Daphne's wave as she pulled the curtain closed. Sixth year was becoming a drag already, and there was still over half a school year left to face.

* * *

The summer was strange. Her father was absent a lot, and Pansy didn't bother asking why. She knew exactly what he was doing, as did her mother. They turned a blind eye and shopped for new jewelry and dresses or attended luncheons and tea parties before returning home to lovely dinners when everyone got back home from their respective plans most evenings.

At least there weren't going to be anymore filthy blood at Hogwarts this year. The Dark Lord was going to make sure of that. Maybe this year would be better. Maybe Draco would even warm back up to her now that things were finally going the way they should be with the Dark Lord finally in power. She could only hope.

She fiddled with the mirror her grandmother gifted her, still curious as to how it was supposed to work. Sometimes she thought she saw _something _appear within the glass, but then it would be lost just as quickly. Daphne suggested she go to Professor Trelawney about it, and, despite her thoughts about the Divination teacher, Pansy decided to visit the barmy witch the evening they arrived at school for their seventh year.

"Oh, my dear you have been gifted with a rare object," Professor Trelawney gushed, inspecting the mirror carefully. "This mirror will show you who your heart is destined to be with."

"It shows my soulmate?"

Professor Trelawney nodded absently, tracing her fingers over the ornate silver handle.

Pansy rolled her eyes, taking the mirror back and looking at it. "Then it is broken, it hasn't shown me anything."

"My dear, this is simply a tool with which to glimpse that which is beyond our mind's feeble grasp," Professor Trelawney said with a click of her tongue. "A key has to _find _the lock in order for it to work. Open your soul to the universe! You must unlock your heart for this mirror to work."

She left with a new perspective despite her dismissal of the teacher's revelation at first. Being hurt once was enough. What if the mirror only hurt her more in the end?

Still, Pansy did what was suggested and willed herself to try, and the results felt like a kick to the stomach.

She could see Draco, though fuzzy and distant, hiding in a lavatory she had never seen before. This piqued her interest enough to try and investigate what she saw, desperate to reconnect with him again.

* * *

A lot had happened in the span of the school year. Before Pansy could figure out what lavatory Draco hid in based on the mirror's setting, spring break was upon them and he didn't come back at the end of it. She made sure to keep an even closer eye on him through the mirror now that he wasn't at the school, even when she didn't like what she saw at times. Pansy was worried about him. It was normal to worry about one's friends and those she cared about, so it wasn't technically spying with the mirror if what Professor Trelawney said was true, right?

When the news spread that Harry Potter had infiltrated the school everyone was in a panic, and Pansy knew that Potter wasn't the only one who'd slipped in through the cracks. The evacuation happened quickly, but Pansy knew that just because Draco wasn't in the crowd and hadn't been a student for weeks... well, that didn't mean that he was safe. She knew Draco was there out of forced obligation, and had to be somewhere in the castle for his own reasons. As they were being led toward the escape tunnel, Pansy broke away from the rest of her house.

Daphne grabbed her arm. "Where are you going?"

"I need my mirror," Pansy said, quickly shrugging her friend off.

"Forget about the damn mirror, Pans! We've got to go!"

"Draco is here!" she hissed back, "I need to find him!"

Understanding settled over her friend's features then, and she gave a nod and let her robes go. "Be quick."

Pansy bolted for the dungeons, hoping to no avail she might run into Draco along the way. Reaching her dorm in a blur, she grabbed the mirror and focused on it hard, praying it would show her where he was in the castle before the spells started flying.

He was in that damned bathroom again, and she had no idea where it was. This wasn't good, but she hoped he would be safe there. She lingered in the dorms, hoping she'd be safe from the oncoming storm as well.

Pansy didn't stop watching him, so the second he left the bathroom she bolted from the dungeons and started to climb floors. He was moving far more quickly through the castle than she was able to. It puzzled her as to how he snatched Crabbe and Goyle so swiftly, but the three now stood on the seventh floor in front of the place where they'd caught Dumbledore's Army a couple years prior. It was also the same area the other students had been evacuated through. He must be looking for that strange room for some reason.

By the time she made it there, they were gone. She pressed her hands against the stone and tried to listen through it but got nothing. There was no door anywhere in the vicinity, and she had no choice but to leave the corridor to see if there was a passage or door she had missed along the way.

A loud sizzling sound mixed with a searing, fiery laugh drew her back to that strange corridor. Tongues of Fiendfyre were pouring out of an exit that didn't exist moments before. Those who burst from it scattered almost instantly as the door slammed shut on the fire. Seeing a streak of blond hair retreat down the corridor opposite, Pansy ran after him.

"Draco!" she screamed breathlessly, "Draco, wait!"

He had the sense to freeze at his name, turning to look at her with frightened eyes. The soot on his face was smeared with sweat and blood, but it did nothing to hide his terrified expression.

"Draco come with me…we can just… We can just go," Pansy said, holding out her hand to him. "There's an exit…somewhere here to Hogsmeade. We can just slip away… No one will know. No one has to know…"

She watched him swallow hard and his eyes shifted to behind her where the room she spoke of most likely was.

Something moved behind him and her eyes shot over to the black robed figure in a mask raising his wand.

Pansy had her wand up and shoved Draco behind her. "Watch out!"

With a flourish of her wand, she cast the Shield Charm just as the spell from the Death Eater connected with it. The power of it pushed her back, and time seemed to freeze as the spell ricocheted off the magical barrier and straight into the wall next to her followed with a loud explosion.

The next thing Pansy knew, she was lying on the ground, looking up at the ceiling as a heavy feeling pressed her body into the floor. The wall was gone, reduced to the rubble that now crushed her. It was quickly becoming very hard to breathe. There was a commotion heard somewhere nearby—Draco. He was pleading with someone, claiming that he was one of them…

Then there was yelling and suddenly it was quiet again.

Draco's blurry face appeared above her, and she felt herself smiling. "You're…okay."

"I am…you aren't," he murmured. Pansy felt his hands cradle her head. "But you're going to be alright, okay? Just…stay awake for me."

She was fighting for every breath now. The wheezing wasn't a good sign, either. The pressure from the rubble had long since numbed the pain of her mangled body underneath.

"It's okay... I'll be alright knowing you are…"

Her eyes clung to Draco's as, with that final whisper, her vision went dark.


End file.
